Everybody is talking about social TV (so I created a new category for it). Olga Kharif posted on research going on at PARC, which will incorporate Tivo and instant messaging elements:

Indeed, in many ways, Social TV will be similar to the Instant Messenger you already use on your computer. Only it will be more dynamic: Social TV software, located on a device like TiVo or even your TV set, might notice that your and your buddy's yacking has gone well past the commercial break. The software would conclude that you are no longer watching the show and, perhaps, pause the program until you are ready to resume, says Nic Ducheneaut, member of PARC research staff.

And, today at Many2Many, Kevin Marks pointed to this:

Tom Coates

[from Social Software for Set-Top boxes...]

A buddy-list for television:
Imagine a buddy-list on your television that you could bring onto your screen with the merest tap of a 'friends' key on your remote control. The buddy list would be the first stage of an interface that would let you add and remove friends, and see what your friends are watching in real-time - whether they be watching live television or something stored on their PVRs. Adding friends would be simple - you could enter letters on screen using your remote, or browse your existing friends' contact lists.

Being able to see what your friends were watching on television would remind you of programmes that you also wanted to see, it would help you spot programmes that your social circle thought were interesting and it could start to give you a shared social context for conversations about the media that you and your friends had both enjoyed.

You can tell these people are not playing massively parallel online games, because if they were they could reduce the discussion to a single phrase: Xfire for TV. Xfire (which I reviewed over a year ago, here), provides augmented presence information about your online gaming pals. It shows not only that they are online or not, but also what game they are playing. Xfire provides the ability to join others in those games by just clicking on that presence indicator.

So, social TV -- with what ever bells and whistles involving web cams, microphones, etc -- is simply going to be the fusion of that Xfire notion of context ual presence (what show I am watching) and the online gamer experience of a shared space with integrated chat. The shared space in this case maybe the John Stewart show instead of World of Warcraft, but the basic are all there, and millions of people are already doing it everyday.